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Astonishing study unveils terrifying reality for gays and lesbians

Gays and lesbians have long endured many things others don't have to go through, but a new paper shows another disturbing truth.

A frightening, firt-of-its kind study shows just what gays and lesbians are going through nowadays, and it goes way beyond what we already know about their predicament. The study, produced by the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, found that the LGBTQ community experience far more physical and sexual violence than hetereosexuals — and it’s not even close.

To come to their conclusions, scientists looked through national data on 1.3 million sexual minority youth, the first time such a study has ever been conducted by the federal government. The study found that about 2 percent of youth identified as gay or lesbian, while another 6 percent called themselves bisexual and 3.2 percent were considered “questioning.”

The purpose of the study was to help public health officials and the community understand the challenges faced by sexual minority youth, as well as the prevalence of such youth, in order to come up with ways to safeguard them from numerous dangers.

The report found that lesbian, gay and bisexual high school students are facing increasing physical and sexual violence despite a growing acceptance in society. They were three times as likely as heterosexuals (17.8 to 5.4 percent) to report being forced into sexual intercourse, and were twice as likely (22.7 to 9.1 percent) to face sexual dating violence and physical dating violence (17.5 to 8.3 percent).

“While many sexual minority youth cope with the transition from childhood to adulthood successfully and become healthy and productive adults, others struggle as a result of challenges such as stigma, discrimination, family disapproval, social rejection, and violence,” the statement reads. “Sexual minority youth are also at increased risk for certain negative health outcomes. For example, young gay and bisexual males have disproportionately high rates of HIV, syphilis, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and adolescent lesbian and bisexual females are more likely to have ever been pregnant than their heterosexual peers.”